The End Game in Palestine

by Paul Larudee / October 7th, 2024

I’ve appended an excellent article by Mike Whitney, which I read as I was starting to write this. It makes mine much shorter because it says much of what I intended, and better, with good references. It’s worth reading carefully, even if you find that much of it simply confirms what you suspected, with more evidence and argument. What I would like to add, nevertheless, is what the future bodes and what Palestine/Israel may finally look like.

1. Israel will not defeat Hamas or its allies in the Palestinian resistance. Hamas is becoming stronger, not weaker, with a growing number of recruits among survivors in Gaza whose families Israel has wiped out. Hamas weapons are largely harvested from the limitless supply of unexploded Israeli ordnance and abandoned arms, which are repurposed as needed in small factories deep underground, in mostly impenetrable and well defended sealed tunnels.

2. Hamas also cannot defeat Israel, but Israel is becoming weaker, not stronger. It may have unlimited US arms and money, but its mostly reserve forces are exhausted, and its economy is in tatters. Roughly 10% of its population has left the country in the last year. Until now, Israel’s military strategy for the last 77 years has been to fight short, intensive wars that quickly crush the enemy. Today it finds itself in a protracted war of attrition. That is why it is failing. Palestinians are ready to endure and sacrifice. Israelis are pampered by comparison.

3. Israel also cannot defeat Hezbollah, Ansarallah (Houthis), Iran, or any of the Axis of Resistance, nor can any or all of them defeat Israel. So why is Israel trying to bring them into the war? One reason is that Netanyahu and his government need to show the discouraged and increasingly angry Israeli public that they have options other than the stalemate in Gaza, i.e. a reason to cheer. The other reason is to attempt to bring the US military more directly into the war. Even the US cannot win without ground troops, for which they have no trained or properly armed forces, but under cover of a wider war, Israel perceives an opportunity to more intensively eliminate a larger portion of the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza. As in the past, this will not bring peace, but it will fulfill some Zionist expansionist dreams and assure a place for Netanyahu in the Zionist pantheon. It is also a potential doomsday scenario that could threaten the entire world as we know it.

4. If (a very big IF) Israel succeeds that far – and even if it does not – its future will nonetheless be very different from its past. It will no longer be the glamorous, trendy place that attracts celebrities and hosts international events. It will be shunned by much of the world, both economically and culturally. It will become a redoubt of Zionist fanatics, with a reduced domestic population as well as diminishing support among both the Jewish and non-Jewish population of the world with whom the fanatics have little in common. It will become more of a pariah than it is now, isolated and more dependent than ever on support from the US and a handful of other countries. It will be a rough existence, not very appealing.

5. How will it end? One possibility is that Israel will eventually fade away, as the crusaders did a millennium ago, its population dwindling to nothing, due to lack of support and reinforcements. Another is that they will finally leave by force, as the hated French did from Algeria, with few traces other than their edifices. The third possibility is that they will accept a single non-Zionist state in all of Palestine, where Jews are not a majority, based on the South African model. Although this last is probably the best for all concerned, it is by no means necessarily the most likely outcome. Then, there is ethnic cleansing, genocide, expulsion and/or eradication of the Palestinians, on a scale that leaves few if any in Palestine, but opens the possibility of future expansion into Lebanon, Syria, the East Bank (Jordan), Sinai (again, in Egypt) and even parts of Saudi Arabia. Some Zionists consider it Manifest Destiny.

I wish I could say that the situation in 2025, on the second anniversary of the al-Aqsa Flood, will be better than on the first, but it might look much the same, only with greater death and destruction. Nevertheless, I suspect that it is the beginning of the end for Israel as we know it – however long it takes – and that the long Palestinian sacrifice may finally achieve freedom, liberation and national sovereigntyFacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. Read other articles by Paul.